KANDAHAR CITY (SW) – Faced with grim challenges due to restrictions on the education and work, some of the women and girls have turned to producing handicrafts at home in Kandahar.
Zulikha, a resident of Kandahar, who has set up a sewing workshop in her home and 16 other women work with her on two shifts, said that they sell the products to a store in the city.
Zulikha, who is the head of her family, said that she has been supporting her living expenses through her tailoring profession for many years, and after the closing of the special market for women in Kandahar, she started working at home. “Our business used to be in the women’s market, but with the closing of this market, we started working at home and this place is very small.”
Zulikha added that with other women who work with her, they sew women’s clothes, curtains and hijabs and sell them to shopkeepers in the market for 150 to 4000 afghanis, as she ccomplained bout the decrease in her profit compared to the past.
Gul Naz, another lady who started making handicrafts at home six months ago, told Salam Watandar: “I am 40 years old and I have eight children. Every day, I go to work, I walk for hours to provide food for my children.”
Asadullah has a women’s clothing store in Rangrizan market of Kandahar city, and most of the products in his store are wwomen’smade products. “We buy clothes from these tailors and sell them in our shop,” he says. “Most people like clothes produced abroad, because their prices are low and they have good designs”.
However, Akhundzada Abdul Salam Javad, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, told Salam Watandar that the issue of closing the special market for women in Kandahar is under consideration. “The Ministry of Industry and Trade supports women who have a business or do industrial work. We are trying to provide them with more facilities.”
Recently, the “Khadija Al-Kubra” market was opened in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, the center of Balkh for women and girls.
ENDS
